"The Event Which We Intend Commemorating This Evening, Is One At Peculiar Interest To Us As Canadians, And More Especially So To Us As Quebecers, The Narrow, I May Say, The Providential Escape Of The Whole Province From Foreign Subjugation One Century Ago.

It is less a chapter of Canadian annals I purpose to read to you this night, than some minute

Details little known, and gleaned from the journals left by eye witnesses of the thrilling hand to hand fight which took place a few hundred yards from where you sit, under our walls, on the 31st December, 1775, between Col. Arnold's New England soldiery and our own garrison.

Possibly, you may not all realize the critical position of the city on that memorable morning. Next day, a Sunday, ushered in the new year. Think you there was much "visiting," much festivity, on that new year's day? alas! though victory crowned our banner, there was mourning in too many Canadian homes; we, too, had to bury our dead.

Let us take a rapid glimpse of what had proceeded the assault.

Two formidable parties, under experienced leaders, in execution of the campaign planned by George Washington and our former Deputy Post Master General, the able Benjamin Franklin, had united under the walls of Quebec. Both leaders intimately knew its highways and by-ways. Brigadier General Richard Montgomery, before settling near New York, had held a lieutenant's commission in His Britannic Majesty's 17th Foot, had taken part in the war of the conquest, in 1759, and had visited Quebec.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 168 of 864
Words from 45751 to 46008 of 236821